Appreciations of art and popular culture (movies, music, books, theater) from long ago to now.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

The Music of Scritti Politti

My
favorite album of all time is Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85, and my favorite band of all time is Scritti
Politti. Because of that, I’ve wanted to write about Scritti Politti’s music
(and the man behind the band, Green Gartside) for a very long time now, but for
some reason, I found that I could never quite bring myself to do so. It’s like
my love for Scritti Politti’s music runs so deep that my mind was unwilling or
unable to process that admiration in writing, or to make my affection for their
music a more public declaration. So rather than writing the kind of detailed post
that I usually write, I figured I’ll try instead to write about finding myself
unable to write about Scritti Politti, which will really end up being a meditation
on how I came to love the kind of music that I do, along with a few of the
reasons why I love it.

I
first heard Scritti Politti’s Cupid &
Psyche 85 thirty years ago now in 1986, at the age of thirteen, when I was on vacation with my
family at a hotel in Florida, on a beach somewhere near St. Petersburg. Also
staying at our hotel were two long-haired sisters, about three or four years
older than I was, who kept Cupid &
Psyche 85 and one other album on constant rotation while sunning themselves
beside the hotel swimming pool. (The other album was Robbie Nevil’s 1986
self-titled debut, another record that I still love today.)

From
that very first listen — I think the first track I heard on Cupid & Psyche 85 was either
“Perfect Way” or “Hypnotize” — I was totally mesmerized by the songs, by their
deft beats, sophisticated lyrics, and a sonic sweetness that lingered somewhere
between musical generations. I’d been raised on late ’70s and early ’80s pop
radio in Cincinnati, Ohio, but the songs I heard those two sisters playing
poolside on their boombox changed everything for me. The world in that sunlit
Florida air tilted and shimmered a bit, then shifted gradually back into focus.

This
happened at a very particular moment in the history of popular music. The
playful sounds of synthesizers had recently begun to liberate the idea of
who could make music professionally and how. The same young people who’d
discovered that loophole then mastered what exactly they could do with those
sounds and ventured to see just how far they could carry them. Also, the technological
innovation of digitizing music and distributing it widely on compact discs had
started to completely revolutionize the music industry and change its game
rules for good.

It
helped that Green Gartside, the founding force (and voice) of Scritti Politti,
was quietly taking stock of all this from across the Atlantic. Sure, the ’80s
pop music scene in central London was already off and running, but Green was in
love with the innovations of American R&B, a love that explains the reggae-influenced
slinkiness of “The Word Girl,” the laidback propulsion of “Absolute,” and the
blazing danceclub-on-fire velocity of “Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin).” By
the time he arrived at 1988’s equally fantastic album Provision, both Miles Davis and Roger Troutman would also be in the
mix on a pair of unforgettable collaborations.

I
don’t want to dwell on Green’s go-rounds with the major-label music business or
his ensuing semi-reclusiveness, because he’s stayed around, as smart as ever, and
made five albums the way that he wanted to make them. (I have a good feeling
that a sixth album might be on the way soon, too.) I do want to dwell for just
a moment, however, on one of my favorite live concert memories ever, when I got
to see Scritti Politti perform here in Boston ten years ago, in November of
2006. I never thought that would happen, especially not after two decades of
loving a band who’d remained so low profile. But when a shy Welsh white guy can
have a dance floor full of black women over 50 getting down to the bass beats
of “Wood Beez,” you know that he’s doing something right.

Hi, I loved the Cupid & Psyche 85 album since a friend of mine sold it to me because it was to pop (my friend said)!It was in 1985 and since then I collected all the songs he wrote not just for SP but also for Chaka Kahn, Al Jarreau and not to mention Miles Davis Perfct Way.Green had the so I called 'pop tune magic touch'.Unfortunately I never seen SP live. They/he will be in Austria the next summer for a date and Italy, where I live, is close. Hope to find time to be there.Ciao

Thank you very much for your comment, Enea. I hope that you'll indeed have a chance to see Scritti Politti perform live in Austria. They're definitely a lot of fun to hear in concert, and Green & his band put on a terrific show. Ciao!